Hi and welcome to my Friday series titled The Hairbag Poet.

You can read about the history of this series here.

In the blogging world Fridays are know as Poetry Friday. You can read about Poetry Friday here.

The other day I was reading this beautiful book of poetry Winter Bees & Other Poems of the Cold, by Joyce Sidman & Rick Allen, and came across the poetic term Pantoum.  Being the Hairbag poet that I am, I was unfamiliar with this term.  The Poetry Foundation (2017) defines Pantoum as “A Malaysian verse form adapted by French poets and occasionally imitated in English. It comprises a series of quatrains, with the second and fourth lines of each quatrain repeated as the first and third lines of the next. The second and fourth lines of the final stanza repeat the first and third lines of the first stanza.” I thought it would be fun to try my own Pantoum, and it was!

I hope you enjoy these posts.  Thanks for stopping by and reading, and please feel free to post your own poetry in the comments if you feel inspired by the photographs.  I always love reading other peoples perspectives on “art”.

 

The Hairbag Poet

Nature Calls

Four empty, ready porta potties lined up in a row,
Green, cold, and stiff waiting in the fallen snow.
Four empty, ready porta potties poised as cold winds blow,
Waiting for the bipedals who really have to go!

Green, cold, and stiff waiting in the fallen snow,
An outdoor loo, like water closet, human waste chateau.
Waiting for the bipedals who really have to go,
They shiver, shake, and creak, and quake, upon their icy floe.

An outdoor loo, like water closet, human waste chateau,
A sentry at the ready, like an outhouse domino.
They shiver, shake, and creak, and quake, upon their icy floe,
A plastic, floating privy island archipelago.

A sentry at the ready as an outhouse domino,
The porta potty represents a bathroom portmanteau.
A plastic, floating privy island archipelago,
A beacon for the bipedals urgent overflow.

The porta potty represents a bathroom portmanteau,
The john, the head, the can, the throne, a restroom bungalow.
A beacon for the bipedals urgent overflow,
When nature calls, come in, sit down, relax, and let it go.

The john, the head, the can, the throne, a restroom bungalow,
Four empty, ready porta potties lined up in a row.
When nature calls, come in, sit down, relax and let it go,
Four empty, ready porta potties poised as cold winds blow.